Do You Know What Design Principles Are Important When Designing? Learn Them Here!

Designing can be challenging unless you have someone doing it for you. In order to help you out we found this article with some design principles to implement. We hope it helps you design your dream home!

———————
Do you want to build your “dream home” but don’t know where to start? House Plan Gallery can help! Our rambler house plans are consistently rated as being some of the best in the industry, for a reason 🙂 Call us today at 601-264-5028 to speak with our expert home design consultants!
———————

From the article:

Some people are born with a great eye for decorating or design. Others learn the skill and are able to apply it successfully. And then there are the rest of us. If you don’t have much of a knack for design, a few basic techniques can go a long way.

These decorating rules and principles are simple enough that most anyone can apply them. Your home might not look like a West Elm catalogue, but it’ll look presentable.

Follow The Rule of Odd Numbers
You might already be familiar with the rule of thirds for photography. Designing with odd numbers as a foundation can create harmony and visual interest, explains designer

Cecilia Walker:”The basic idea of the rule is that details and objects that are arranged or grouped in odd numbers are more appealing, memorable, and effective than even-numbered pairings.
It helps to have groupings of objects in varying heights, shapes and textures. At the same time, there should be something similar about them. This advice seems to contradict itself, but the point is, there should be something that groups your items together, but also something about each of them that is slightly different.”

Look at the image above as an example. Three vases, all different heights. The main materials are similar—wicker and glass. But there are subtle differences in elements—sand, water, and the texture of the limes.

Walker points out that this is just a basic rule, and it might not work in every instance. But if this grouping doesn’t look right to you, go with your gut. The goal here is to make sure everything isn’t uniform, and by extension, boring.

Find Your Room’s Focal Point
A room’s focal point is its most emphasized feature. It’s the thing your eyes are naturally drawn to when you walk into the room. And everything around the focal point compliments it.

If you’re lost with how to start decorating a room, finding its focal point is a good start. Many rooms have built-in focal points: a large window with a view, for example, or a fireplace. If your room doesn’t have a built-in focal point, here are some tips and options for creating one:

Paint one wall a different color, then accessorize with artwork or shelves, says interior designer Coral Nafie.

Decide what you want to use the room for, then create a focal point around that, says The Inspired Room. For example, if you want to use a room for reading, you’d make a bookshelf your focal point.

Nafie also suggests simply using a large piece of furniture as a focal point.

You could use a large piece of artwork as a focal point. A large mirror also works well.

Once you find the focal point, decorate around it. Use its main color in elements throughout the rest of the room. In the above example, the focal point—the fireplace—is white. The red walls make its color stand out, and the white candles, orchid and vases all around the room compliment the fireplace.

You can also frame it. In the photo, the vases, windows and sofas serve this purpose. A fireplace is easy to frame, as it usually comes with a mantle. You can add decor on or above the mantle. If your focal point is a large window with a view, you might arrange your furniture to frame it.

Once you have a focal point, a center point helps balance the room. Apartment Therapy explains:

“The center point is the core of your room’s layout. It doesn’t have to be the exact middle of the room, although that’s the case in many homes. The center point of a living room is where the coffee table or center table will sit, with seating arranged around it.”

Think of it as the room’s anchor.

—————–
Looking for more design principles? Checkout this article with design principles that could be of interest to you.
—————–

Author:About Stephen Mathis

Stephen Mathis is the co-owner of House Plan Gallery, one of the nation's top home design firms.
Stephen as been involved in the home design industry for over 25 years, and is a Certified Professional Building Designer (C.P.B.D.) and holds a B.S. in Finance & Real Estate from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Stephen is a Christian, married to Mellissa Mathis, and has two awesome boys - Parker & Hunter. In his rare spare time, he loves hunting and doing anything outdoors.

No comments yet.

We're Here to Help!

Recent Happy Client Testimonials

We had been planning to build our dream home for years, and property on which to build it became available to us in 2010.

Our favorite features of the home are threefold: The colonial style; the large open greatroom/dining/kitchen in the middle; with bedrooms to the 4 corners (3 bedroom plus flex).

We contracted the exterior ourselves, using sub-contractors who we know. Once the “outer shell” of the home was finished, my wife and I took over. My father was a contractor, so I had been exposed to pretty much every area of construction.

We knew it would be slow process, as we would have to learn a lot, and only have an hour or two a day after work and on weekends to put toward it.

So far, I have framed in the upstairs bonus room (we used pre-fab trusses instead of stick built, so work was to be done), and finished the staircase and stairwell.

I have completed wiring the entire house for electricity, telephone, computer hookups, and satellite/cable, using one end of the front secondary bedroom’s closet as control center.

We have laid the hearth and installed the woodburning stove and drywalled the living room and both front bedrooms.

That is where we are… 14 months after taking over from the contractors. We hope to be complete and moved in by Christmas 2012. We’ll update you then.

We absolutely adore this plan, and did whatever it took to keep true to the artist’s conception drawing that came with it.

Thanks House Plan Gallery for the beautiful (and well-detailed) home design. Its truly our dream home!

House Plan Gallery was very easy to work with. I made several changes to the online plan I chose and they offered professional advice and made the changes efficiently. I would definitely recommend them to anyone and I would use them again if building another home.